Recent developments in digital signal processing techniques, such as digital compression techniques and multimedia content indexing techniques, have enabled a variety of new digital services to be provided to a cable subscriber's home through existing telephone and coaxial cable lines. A large number of cable or CATV channels are now provided to customers by compressing digital video, transmitting the compressed digital video over conventional coaxial cables, and decompressing the video at the customer's set top terminal. For example, video-on-demand enables a user or subscriber to search through metadata, such as the program title, to locate desired programming.
Interactive cable television systems have been implemented to provide enhanced subscriber programming services. “Interactive television” refers to a cable television network in which the subscriber can communicate with the network operator and/or a computational component, through the same communication medium used to provide broadcast streams to the subscriber. By way of example, “movie on demand” video systems are now in use in which a subscriber communicates directly with a video service provider over coaxial cables to request a particular video program from a video library, and the requested video program is thereafter routed to the subscriber's home. Web TV™ has been implemented which permits a subscriber to access the internet but not resources within the cable network.
While there is a tremendous need for interactive television, the implementation of interactive television has been restricted to specific services and/or features. There is a need for an interactive television system that permits cable network subscribers not only to access freely other data networks but to access freely components located within the interactive television network itself.